This Is What My Anxiety Feels Like
It’s not super fun
Sometimes I’m in a mood I jokingly call “the mood where I want to punch someone in the face”. I never want to punch a specific person, I just want to punch a person — anyone at all will do! I use this phrase because while I’ve never actually punched someone in the face before, I assume it’s a huge tension reliever and an exhilarating experience (for the puncher, not the punchee).
This mood used to be fleeting, lasting only momentarily or for part of a day. But more recently I’ve been experiencing this feeling for longer durations. There may be several days or upwards of a week where I’m angry and irritable all the time for no discernible reason. It occurred to me, when I was experiencing one of these angry episodes, that constant anger is not normal. So I Googled “suddenly I’m angry all the time” and I learned that anger and irritability are often related to anxiety or depression.
Learning this made me feel both better and worse. Better because at least I knew I wasn’t turning into a psychopath. And worse because, although feelings of anxiety and depression aren’t new to me, anger and irritability were a new manifestation of symptoms.
Over New Year’s Eve weekend, I went away on a short trip with my boyfriend and some of his friends, many of whom I’ve met and hung out with before. It should've been fun, but for some reason, I fell into a mood all weekend. I hated everyone and everything. I cursed a lot. I yelled. I complained. I pouted. I was a drama queen and an asshole, and I knew I was behaving like a huge jerk and yet I couldn’t help it because everything was just annoying the fuck out of me.
I noticed the change in my behavior and so did my boyfriend.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked about a million times, “Are you okay?”
At some point, I finally explained to him, “I’m feeling really anxious and I don’t know why.” I trembled as I said it. I tried not to cry, too. I felt so fragile, as if saying those words out loud to him was a confession of my own weakness. I was afraid he wouldn’t understand or that he’d think I was being overly dramatic.
But he did understand.
He even hugged me and that was just what I needed in the moment.
I’m not sure exactly what triggered my episode that weekend (do I call it an “episode”? I think that’s the best way to describe it), but I think a number of things were going on: hormones, a dash of social anxiety, the stress of traveling and living out of a suitcase, winter blues, less exercise and a poor diet over the course of the holidays, it was really fucking cold outside. All of those things stirred together to brew the perfect storm of Angry Me.
Anyway, this experience forced me to think about what exactly I was feeling over those few days. Anxiety can take many forms, so what do I mean when I say “I’m feeling really anxious”?
Well, for me, this is what it’s like…
- There is a heavy feeling in my chest. Like when you receive bad news and feel like your heart is sinking. But it’s not momentary. It’s a constant, dull sinking feeling right in the center of my chest, just above the bottom of my rib cage.
- I feel weak. Physically weak, almost faint. Like I’ll just tip over and shatter if the wind is too strong or my feelings become too heavy.
- Brain chatter. My brain is always spinning in thought. Sometimes it’s fixated on one thought that I turn over in my brain again and again to examine it every which way I can, and then I do it all over again in case there’s something else I haven’t considered. Sometimes it’s multiple passing thoughts that flicker by one by one, randomly. Either way, my brain is neither calm nor quiet. It’s flustered.
- I bite my lips and pick at my fingernail cuticles. Apparently, I wring my hands and fiddle around with my fingers, too. Sometimes I do this without even realizing it.
- Tired. Very tired.
- Detached. I don’t engage in conversation. I pull back. I’m quiet. I don’t feel much like talking and I don’t feel the urge to do things I’d otherwise consider fun.
- Numb. I don’t feel sad per se (though sometimes I do feel sad), but I don’t feel happy either. I feel blank. Empty. Hollow.
- Sometimes, I cry. I cry for no apparent reason other than I feel overwhelmed.
- Irritability and anger. These two are intertwined. Every little thing annoys me and I get angry about it. Things that shouldn’t and usually don’t annoy me suddenly do. Things like when a person sits too close to me. Or when my coworker puts her lunch in my spot in the fridge even though we don’t have assigned spots she should know I always put my lunch in the same place and now I need to move her lunch because I don’t want it touching my lunch. Things like when I go to the supermarket to buy a specific thing and they’re all out of that thing and the other supermarket which probably has the thing has already closed for the night so now I’m mad because I don’t have the thing I wanted and if I had just gone out earlier I could have tried the other store and so I’m mad at myself, too. Things like the aroma of my housemate’s dinner, and when he leaves his blanket on the couch and I wish he’d fold it or move it or something but meanwhile I don’t even want to sit on the couch I just want the blanket somewhere else. Things like loud noises, and chewing noises, and really just everything. Everything is annoying. Especially happy people. Happy, bubbly, perky outgoing people are really fucking annoying. Like, just be quiet and stop smiling, please.
- Lonely. It’s a strange oxymoron of a combination, but I simultaneously want to be alone and then when I am alone, I feel lonely. But I also don’t want to be around people. It’s a weird cycle that probably doesn’t make sense, but that’s how I feel.
- I curse a lot more. That’s probably the anger. Or the stress. It comes out in excessive use of “motherfucker” and “goddammit” and lots of “fucks” just sprinkled throughout my sentences.
- Shame. I don’t like that I feel this way and I don’t want anyone to know I feel this way and so I try to hide it and then that just makes everything worse. I also assume everyone can see I’m being an asshole and they don’t know why and so they probably hate me. I assume they hate me and then I hate myself for allowing myself to behave in a way that would make other people hate me.
Yeah. It’s not super fun. But that’s how anxiety feels to me.
I’m not sure why I’m publishing this on a public forum. I don’t want sympathy or even tips on how to handle my anger and irritability. I’ll work on it (I promise). I think the reason I’m writing this at all is because anxiety can be lonely. You feel like you’re crazy and you feel like nobody will understand. But that’s simply not true. There are a lot of people who feel this way sometimes and a lot of people who will understand. There are also a lot of people who may not understand how you feel through personal experience, but they will be sympathetic nonetheless, perhaps offering a hug if a hug is what you need.
There are also people who will tell you to just stop. “You’re fine” they’ll say, or “It’s no big deal”. They will try to cheer you up as if cheering up is what you need when really it only makes you feel worse. They might tell you to smile. Dear god, I hope they don’t tell you to smile, but they might. These are the people you’ll want to punch in the face.
